Shuffling Up and Dealing, Still

When Congress passed legislation last fall that sought to prevent gambling Web sites from accepting electronic money transfers, many online poker players thought they had been dealt their last hand. But as it turns out, online gamblers — a group that includes plenty of college students — have generally managed to work around the new restriction.

Transferring money to a poker site from a bank account or a credit card is no longer allowed, but several other payment methods — like Western Union wires, check cards, and phone cards — are still legal. And when things get really dire, the sites take extraordinary steps, according to the University of Maryland's Diamondback:

In desperate circumstances, [Pokerstars.com] also offers a one-time-use-only scheme in which gamers adopt the name of a Puerto Rican counterpart to whom they then send the necessary money.

The new workarounds have kept students flocking to online poker rooms, but they have also made it less convenient for winners to claim their cash: Extracting money from a poker site used to take no more than five days, but now it can take up to a month and a half. –Brock Read